“But I need the table for that, too——­”

“No, you don’t.  You can’t be a—­a very skillful w-workman if you’ve got to use your table for everything——­”

[Illustration:  “‘I’m afraid’, he ventured ’that I may require that table for cutting.’”]

He laughed.  “You are quite right; I’m not a skillful paper hanger.”

“Then,” she said, “I am surprised that you came here to paper our library, and I think you had better go back to your shop and send a competent man.”

He laughed again.  The paper hanger’s youthful face was curiously attractive when he laughed—­and otherwise, more or less.

He said:  “I came to paper this library because Mr. Carr was in a hurry, and I was the only man in the shop.  I didn’t want to come.  But they made me....  I think they’re rather afraid of Mr. Carr in the shop....  And this work must be finished today.”

She did not know what to say; anything to keep him away from the table until she could think clearly.

“W-why didn’t you want to come?” she asked, fighting for time.  “You said you didn’t want to come, didn’t you?”

“Because,” he said, smiling, “I don’t like to hang wall paper.”

“But if you are a paper hanger by trade——­”

“I suppose you think me a real paper hanger?”

She was cautiously endeavoring to free one edge of her skirt; she nodded absently, then subsided, crimsoning, as a faint tearing of cloth sounded.

“Go on,” she said hurriedly; “the story of your career is so interesting.  You say you adore paper hanging——­”

“No, I don’t,” he returned, chagrined.  “I say I hate it.”

“Why do you do it, then?”

“Because my father thinks that every son of his who finishes college ought to be disciplined by learning a trade before he enters a profession.  My oldest brother, De Courcy, learned to be a blacksmith; my next brother, Algernon, ran a bakery; and since I left Harvard I’ve been slapping sheets of paper on people’s walls——­”

“Harvard?” she repeated, bewildered.

“Yes; I was 1907.”

“You!”

He looked down at his white overalls, smiling.

“Does that astonish you, Miss Carr?—­you are Miss Carr, I suppose——­”

“Sybilla—­yes—­we’re—­we’re triplets,” she stammered.

“The beauti—­the—­the Carr triplets!  And you are one of them?” he exclaimed, delighted.

“Yes.”  Still bewildered, she sat there, looking at him.  How extraordinary!  How strange to find a Harvard man pasting paper!  Dire misgivings flashed up within her.

“Who are you?” she asked tremulously.  “Would you mind telling me your name.  It—­it isn’t—­George!”

He looked up in pleased surprise: 

“So you know who I am?”

“N-no.  But—­it isn’t George—­is it?”

“Why, yes——­”

“O-h!” she breathed.  A sense of swimming faintness enveloped her:  she swayed; but an unmistakable ripping noise brought her suddenly to herself.